- it's incredibly stupid to ban the flipper zero because it's factually not even part of the problem
- but it's equally stupid to "ban insecure vehicles". if kia makes a cheap car with crappy locks either don't buy it (because maybe insurance) or add and aftermarket immobilizer or a steering wheel lock. if it was really negligent of kia to "save a couple bucks", then it's equally negligent on you for not spending a couple bucks.
- i also cringe at the idea that we throw the word negligent around when talking about failing to prevent other peoples crimes. i'm not negligent for not doing enough to prevent the crimes of some other asshole. nor is kia. meanwhile, there's sibling threads here that point out that the us is far to hard on the criminals. so wait - kia and me and other law abiding entities are "negligent", but the asshole who stole the car deserves compasion, etc.?
- it's stupid-on-stupid-on-stupid to sit here discussing the problem of car thefts, caused by lack of enforcement of the existing laws against it, and the proposed solutions is making more things illegal (and arguing about which things).
Nobody knows a vehicle is insecure when they buy it. It's simpler, more cost efficient, and more valuable to society just to require cars to have basic security features. Your idea of market correction doesn't work in this case, because it's never advertised as having shitty security, and the average (or even informed) consumer will have no idea this is a problem until after they've bought the car.
I never understand this arguement. I hear it in the form "we should just regulate cars to be safer", why dont you just buy a safer car? "What do you take me for? I got a mustang GT, the last thing that car is worried about is safety". Interesting, you bought a car because its fast, not paying any consideration to whether it could safely get you from point A to B, and this is what you rely on to get you to work?
Its not social darwinism, the lack of critical thinking skills among the general population is alarming. Americans have apparently been coddled to the point that they arent worried about basic needs; if you go to buy a car you should have some simple considerations, is this car safe? What are the typical maintenance costs? Is it common for this car to be stolen?
Things like, housing, transportation, education, those are really central aspects of peoples lives. Its all well and good that you want to draw symbols on paper and make all these things safe, but it appears to have come at a pretty serious cost. That cost, is the inability for the US population to use critical thinking.
> I never understand this arguement. I hear it in the form "we should just regulate cars to be safer", why dont you just buy a safer car?
I don't understand your argument. Do you expect every potential car buyer regardless of tech literacy to go to a dealership with an SDR setup on-hand, asking if they could test-out the key fobs, capture some signals, try to figure them out and look for common vulnerabilities on the new models? Do you expect the seller to explain the technical details of the key fobs at a depth you can be sure there's no vulnerabilities?
Determining that the key fobs were implemented securely is not something the buyer or even the seller will be able to determine. I would imagine a regulator has the ability to inspect them as they're being designed/built.
> if you go to buy a car you should have some simple considerations [...] Is it common for this car to be stolen?
By the time vulnerabilities are found and people start stealing them, there should already be plenty sold and roaming the streets.
We should regulate cars to be safer because I don't get to decide which car (or, more likely, truck) the moron who puts me/my family in the hospital (or the grave) was driving. Given the trends in traffic and pedestrian deaths in the US, our regulators are grossly negligent in this regard.
Sure, in the context of broad safety you have a point. Of course, you are more likely to die in places where police are responsible for your protection. The safest places people inhabit are their home, their work, places with private security measures.
The negligence you speak of, how widespread would you say it is? Would you say the EPA dropped the ball preventing the east Palestine Ohio train derailment? Would you say that having some hard cutoff for how many chemical train cars until the train is reclassified? I imagine you would agree, that the chemical company sending 59 (oh w/e) train cars instead of 60 so that they are under easier rules, is kind of bullshit.
If the company is following the rules then they can largely get away with it when things go wrong; if that company had actual liability for whats in the train cars, then they would have insurance. That insurance would be prorated on the safety profile of the train, and it would fix the hazzard or pay the claimants their due. These regulations only exist to cement decrepit companies monopoly over you.
I have no faith that "negligence" in the public sector will improve. The roads, the enforcement of driving conduct, that will not improve. The safety, security, and reliability of cars will improve, because there is still competition from self aware drivers.
Those are places where you only call the cops ('public security') because the situation has seriously degenerated. Their security measures are the ones you are already familiar with; locks and keys, the understanding that you need specific permission to be present, some sort of fridge policy etc.
You make a good point. The government should not impose rules about what companies do and also the government should hold companies liable for what they do, which is a different thing from having rules
Exactly. If an insurance company writes rules for a company to follow, it is a good thing. If the government writes those same rules it is a bad thing as the goal is not to reduce the number of thefts but rather make whole the people that get their car stolen and have the money to sue
I don't have much faith that our regulators are going to get their shit together either, but that doesn't mean I can't hold them responsible for the consequences of their negligence. As for the theory that the invisible hand of the market will drive better outcomes in traffic safety, that is obviously not happening in aggregate. It may even be having the opposite effect, given the unchecked proliferation of pickup trucks and large SUVs that are known to be more dangerous to pedestrians and the drivers of other vehicles.
I'm not super familiar with the East Palestine derailment, but based on what I do know about it I think your 59/60 train cars example is sort of disingenuous. American freight rail operators are well known for skimping on safety in multiple dimensions; issues like obsolete brake technology, stretched-thin crews, insufficient maintenance, and excessively long/heavy trains have all been discussed to death before and after that accident. The problem isn't some off-by-one miscalibration, but rather that our regulators (and I'm including lawmakers under that umbrella, especially since they're usually the ones taking the bribes AFAIK) are simply not willing to demand that these industries put public safety over profits in areas where there are well-understood systemic safety problems. AIUI, efforts to improve rail safety during the 2010s and earlier have been largely stillborn, sabotaged by rail company lobbying.
Just to illustrate what I'm talking about via another example: if the MCAS system that killed 346 passengers on two 737 Max aircraft within the span of a few months had been an honest design flaw rather than a hack devised to juice sales by dodging retraining requirements, cheaply and shoddily implemented ignoring the misgivings of Boeing personnel and rubber-stamped by the FAA, then it would have been a simple tragedy. As it actually happened, it's an atrocity—a failure on multiple levels by many people who ought to have known better, holes in the Swiss cheese all lining up, 346 lives sacrificed on the altar of avarice. That's where the invisible hand gets you when you let it take the wheel, but I suppose next you'll tell me that those people ought to have done their own safety audits of the aircraft that got them killed.
Depending on the make and model of a car, you might save money because insurance companies have determined those cars to be safer. If you have a lowjack, your location, your history, there are a lot of factors that go into insurance costs. Insurance companies adjust insurance prices based on risk. Why would you assume private insurance wouldnt also price their policies based on how safe a train is, what the risk is that it crashes, etc.?
Its about who is signing off on whats safe. The government has proven that thry are at best incompetent, they do not have the incentive. A private company has to maintain their reputation through quality of service, they dont have the seemingly endless faith of people because they are "government".
> Why would you assume private insurance wouldnt also price their policies based on how safe a train is, what the risk is that it crashes, etc.?
I don't assume this and I don't think I have even slightly implied that I do. It's obviously, trivially, verifiably false.
Your mistake is in assuming that cost is the primary motivating factor for consumers^[1], and that corporations and their stakeholders won't favor paying higher insurance costs (and fines, etc.) today over paying even more toward safety improvements that won't break even wrt. insurance costs for many years. As I mentioned above, the observable state of the real world explicitly disproves the claim that market forces will drive positive trends in safety outcomes.
^[1] Look how many huge, expensive pickup trucks are on the road in America today. Look at the monthly payments their owners are enduring to satisfy their vanity; look at their spotless paintjobs, empty beds (except perhaps the token equally spotless toolbox), and mud-free fenders.
Doing a security analysis of a car is a complex task that most laymen cannot do, so the argument for laws and compliance among specialists is quite reasonable.
Put it another way: if it's all market based, your choices in buying just get 2x more complex. Is this car easily unlocked? Do the brakes often fail? Can it resist a collision?
Or even another thought: since most people don't think about security, companies will flood the market with insecure cars. Want a secure car? That would be niche and cost you double.
You shouldn't have to consider if the car's locks work, because working locks should be a baseline in cars produced in a first world country. It's that simple and easy. You aren't nearly as smart as you think you are and having basic standards of how corporations should operate isn't coddling.
i think this issue is overblown and is being used as a smokescreen for the rash of vehicle thefts caused, not by bad kia security, but large-scale organized crime.
Should other physical objects also be subject to this same regulation? What about bitcoins? Your proposed response is unsuccessful as policy reasoning.
My proposed response has been making cars safer and more reliable for years. I don't care if it applies to bitcoin or not, we're talking about cars. Next!
The ability to leave your car in a public space while shopping is a major part of their utility. Cars are therefore common, left in the open, and valuable, but not particularly portable without being turned on.
Jewelry, TV’s, bitcoin wallets etc aren’t just left in the open. Your house, front lawn etc is valuable and accessible but not generally mobile.
Yes, and they generally are. In almost all states, sellers have to ensure that the things they sell are "fit for purpose". It's reasonable for us to ensure that they meet the basic requirements of being whatever they are - and for cars, part of their basic purpose is to sit in insecure areas and ensure only authorized users can operate them.
In the age of information ignorance is no longer an option, Before I buy a car, most often the second largest purchase a person will make in their life next to housing. I do i TON of research, I look at insurance rates, I look at Theft Rates for that model, I look on Car Complaints and other Database for common failure items for that model, I have it inspected by a independent mechanic having them pay extra attention to the common failure items. etc
If you just roll in and let the salesman take you for a ride then you deserve the outcome.
Yes anyone who doesn’t have the knowledge/time/motivation/cynicism to prevent themselves getting taken advantage of is basically asking for it, nay “deserves” it.
Yeah, and if you did not read T&S and now going to become a part of human centipede, that’s on you. I mean, how hard can it be to read a 22 page legalese, before going through a sign up flow, that was heavily optimized to increase conversion?
anyone who thinks there is anybody in the universe other than themselves that is going to take responsibility for their safety, security, happiness, etc. absolutely "deserves" what they get.
i didn't say they did! i said they need to take responsibility for their own safety/security or suffer the consequences. whether they should be expected to... is totally irrelevant. i'm not stating a preference, i'm stating a fundamental law of nature.
and not knowing even that simple fact is what makes it "deservedly" so.
Regulation can remove those consequences for any chosen safety/security feature by making every choice have it. Fundamental law of nature? You're deluding yourself.
(And if you say you mean outside of regulation, that people need to be responsible in general for other aspects of life, then your argument is no longer connected to the original comment you replied to.)
regulation is part of the universe. to expect that it protects you exactly when you'd want it to, but does not inhibit you want you'd not want it to is stupid. trying to offload your responsibility onto some "them" is not a fix.
i'm definitely not deluding myself. that is life. you need to have both the freedom and the inclination to take care of yourself, if you don't have both you'll suffer.
I do not need the freedom to buy a defective lock.
Mandating basic safety and security features is not always going to protect me, but it will mostly protect me. It's not stupid to want that tradeoff. I don't care if you define "fix" as 100% so therefore it's not a fix. I want the 95%. I want defense in depth, regulation on top of personal investigation.
you are right. you do NOT need the freedom to buy a defective lock.
you need the right to decide for yourself if the lock is defective or not.
if you give that away, you will instantly be given the "freedom" to buy a lock that is defective-by-design. perhaps the lock designer's brother is a friend of the govt. perhaps the govt. agency does not want bad publicity, whatever.
the point is "defense-in-depth" (cliche) or not, you are ultimately responsible for you. there can be no other way.
> you are right. you do NOT need the freedom to buy a defective lock.
> you need the right to decide for yourself if the lock is defective or not.
This sounds like you agree with me. This kind of regulation sets a minimum, not a maximum.
We don't need freedom to buy very bad locks. We do need freedom to buy the best lock we want to buy.
But the rest of your post implies that regulation will change both minimum and maximum and mandate a specific lock. I disagree with that premise.
> (cliche)
Are you trying to imply something there?
> you are ultimately responsible for you. there can be no other way.
I am "ultimately" responsible, but product makers should have responsibilities too. If I fail at something, I should not be 0% safe. The baseline should be pretty high before I apply my own efforts.
Should we allow cars without seatbelt? Everyone knows cars with seatbelts are safer. If consumers don’t like it, they can just choose to buy the ones with seatbelts.
Do you look up the software security measures implemented by the keyfob too? That information would be very difficult for a layperson to find and make sense of.
This may be the "age of information", but information is only useful as your ability to find, understand, and evaluate it.
Lets see, oooo tiktok, heres the kia challenge. Or maybe google "are kias secure". Whatever format you can understand, you will be presented several sources that explain the situation quite clearly.
Isn't there an aftermarket solution you can buy that would make the kia you bought three years ago more secure?
Sure, it sucks that you have to unexpectedly spend money on it, but when you bought a cheap car you knew you were taking the risk of having to deal with unknown unknowns.
If you googled kias at any time ever you would have seen they are absolutely riddled with issues. People on HN seem to think buying a car is like designing a CPU or investing in a portfolio of stocks, you could try doing some research.
Car thefts are extremely dangerous for everyone on or near the road. It's obviously better to just not allow car manufacturers to neglect basic security practices. There's also entire categories of issues you don't have to research anymore because they've been optimized out of every modern car. Soon cars being hacked with toys will be added to that list for you. Notably, "airbag explosion rate" wasn't on that research project of yours.
> if kia makes a cheap car with crappy locks either don't buy it
Immobilizers were a standard feature on cars for decades. If you went to buy a car, no one was putting immobilizer on the list of features, and they certainly wouldn't let you try breaking the ignition lock on a test drive.
If they had advertised that their vehicles were insecure, then sure, it's on the buyer, but they didn't.
it'd be bad to advertise that they have in immobilizer or anti-theft when providing either nothing or a badly broken implementation (like you often see in IOT).
it's not negligence to simply not provide a feature they didn't promise to provide and weren't required to (in the US). it is simply not their responsibility in any way to ensure your car's safety from theft. if you assumed it was and that they provided a feature you wanted because everybody else usually does, then the negligent party would be you for not RTFM. except that's wrong here too.
nobody is negligent here. you do not have a social responsibility to have an immobilizer on your car to prevent it from being stolen. and neither does the manufacturer. having it locked is plenty to legally make it "breaking-and-entering". and even if you leave the keys in the car and the engine running, it's still grand theft and your insurance will indeed pay out, which they would not do if they could claim negligence. the criminals are 100% at fault here. and bad things can happen without someone being negligent.
arguing about anything beyond that is just a fight about how good that anti-theft system has to be. are you negligent if you don't have an armed guard on your car?
Speaking as an outsider: How are Kias sales going these days? How's their reputation as a result of this?
Imo for removing security for the US market they deserve to be properly thrashed and dragged through the mud, regardless of the fact that they are offering upgrades from free if I read the following correctly.
The manufacturer is not the victim here, the buyer is. If I pay a contractor to install a new door and lock on my apartment and it turns out they did a terrible job which made it trivial for a thief to break in, the contractor should be liable.
Crime exists, this is the world we live in. Failing to implement even the most basic security measure, which is considered industry standard, in a high-value product that is known to be very attractive to thieves and then selling that product to consumers with no warning that "unlike most other cars on the market, which have many layers of security features, this car can be stolen using a cheap toy" makes the inevitable thefts absolutely Kia's fault.
It's not like people are saying the thieves did nothing wrong, both sides are at fault: the thieves stole people's cars to enrich themselves and Kia secretly omitted a basic security feature which in turn enabled thousands of fully predictable and preventable thefts from their customers, again, to enrich themselves.
But people ARE saying the thieves are not at fault.. “it’s just kids”, “we don’t want to put them in jail because that would ruin their future”, “they can’t pay a fine anyway so there is no point in going after them”
"We shouldn't put dumb kids into cages and forever brand them as criminals for making one bad decision" is a far cry from "they are not at fault for what they did".
Also, insert the usual point about how many people are forced into crime by poverty and the complete lack of a social safety net in the US here.
No one is saying that, there are multiple contributors to the problem here, sure the thieves own the bulk of it, but manufacturers could fix the issue or offer a solution like a cheap install of an immobilizer.
In my left leaning workplace in my left leaning state, most colleagues do not want to assign the thieves any blame or have them face any consequences. These colleagues only want to blame and penalize the manufacturers.
I think the manufacturer should fix things so they are more in line with other manufacturers. But I also want to see some repercussions for the thieves.
Can the downvoters explain why they disagree with:
"I think the manufacturer should fix things so they are more in line with other manufacturers. But I also want to see some repercussions for the thieves."
That's obviously not the sentence people are disagreeing with.
There is no way your colleagues want the thieves to not face any consequences. It's a completely different thing to not trust the justice system to give an appropriate consequence.
My colleagues never call out the thieves or call for consequences. They skirt that issue and focus their rhetoric on the big, bad companies or blame the victim (eg should have locked his bike, should have taken valuables out of the car, etc)
> Failing to implement even the most basic security measure, which is considered industry standard, in a high-value product that is known to be very attractive to thieves and then selling that product to consumers with no warning that "unlike most other cars on the market, which have many layers of security features, this car can be stolen using a cheap toy" makes the inevitable thefts absolutely Kia's fault.
I don't think this logic works. If you buy a classic vehicle, they don't have these kinds of things either. People make replicas that likewise don't. And there is no clear line here. Basically any car can be stolen by, if nothing else, replacing the car's computer with one that accepts the thief's key.
Meanwhile a car is a large purchase where people can reasonably be expected to do some research. If you're about to buy a car you should read some reviews, and the reviewers should tell you if their security is bad. Then you know and can make your decision. People who learn of this may want to buy a different car, or take some other countermeasures if they buy this one.
Kia doesn't have any kind of a monopoly in this market. There are many other carmakers. Maybe you don't care that their security is bad because you always park your car in a garage. Maybe you like the discount you got because other buyers wanted a car with better security. Why does it have to be illegal, instead of letting the market sort it out in the presence of actual competition?
> If you buy a classic vehicle, they don't have these kinds of things either
Not a good analogy, because buying a classic vehicle automatically waives a bunch of safety and other features that are not only expected in modern day, they are straight up legally required.
A car manufacturer cannot remake a classic vehicle from the 80s and release it in the US in 2024. Or, probably, EU too, I cannot speak for that due to my unfamiliarity with vehicle laws there, but afaik they are more strict than the US. It would be just illegal to sell that car. Thin pillars that won’t pass any modern safety tests, no backup camera (which makes it illegal to sell as a new car in the US), not enoug crumple zones, etc.
Those are explicit regulatory requirements and not just "well a lot of cars have this and I didn't bother to check" as in this case.
And if you were going to do that in this case, the thing to require is the ability for third parties to fix the manufacturer's software mistakes. Otherwise the carmaker goes out of business, as happens from time to time when they don't make a decent product, and then you can't go to them to fix something like this when it subsequently comes out even though their cars will be on the road for many more years.
Whereas if anybody could patch the code in their own car, you wouldn't have this situation where Kia ignores the issue, because third parties would have done it already, the same whether they're incompetent as bankrupt.
The standard dodge in the US is to sell “kit cars” which require the buyer to do a bunch of paperwork to get a VIN. I don’t think they can be sold ready-to-drive but I think there are dodges there too (owner tightens last bolt style). The details vary by state.
Looking for details, I found that there have also been recent changes to ease requirements for small-batch (< 325/year) turn-key replica manufacturers.
> Kia doesn't have any kind of a monopoly in this market
No need for a monopoly, just bad incentives. All manufacturers could just decide that it's better to save more money and omit basic security features across the entire industry, making it impossible to buy a new car with certain standards. What are people going to do, not drive any cars? That's why it's near impossible to find a printer that's not garbage.
> What are people going to do, not drive any cars?
They're going to buy a car and then pay someone to install an aftermarket immobilizer.
> That's why it's near impossible to find a printer that's not garbage.
Brother laser printers are widely regarded as decent. You're also legally permitted to buy cheap garbage for low prices. It will be cheap garbage, so maybe don't buy it.
This all assumes the "perfect information, even playing field" theory that capitalists love to use but is completely unrealistic.
Reviews rarely talk about things like this, this information is not explicitly given to reviewers or customers and neither can be expected to find out on their own (i.e. by trying to hack the car themselves), the car manufacturer spends insane amounts of money advertising to the buyer using every psychological trick in the book, the buyer is often under time pressure, the savings from cost-cutting are rarely passed down to the consumer...
Buying things in the current market landscape is a battle, not an optimization problem.
> this information is not explicitly given to reviewers or customers and neither can be expected to find out on their own (i.e. by trying to hack the car themselves)
Reviewers don't get the information by penetration testing the car themselves. They get the information because their profession is reviewing cars, so when they hear of this through their high contact surface area with industry news, they add it to their review on their website.
> the car manufacturer spends insane amounts of money advertising to the buyer using every psychological trick in the book
Because cars are big ticket items where a single incremental sale can justify a lot of ad spend, not because buyers are incapable of reading a review.
> the buyer is often under time pressure
The buyer is rarely under time pressure. Most people don't wait until their car breaks down to replace it, and even if they did and desperately need to have a car, then they would rent or lease one in the interim while shopping for another one. This is often even covered by insurance. Almost nobody is in the position of having to buy a car immediately without time to do any research, and the percentage of people who are isn't enough to significantly affect which cars or features succeed in the market.
> the savings from cost-cutting are rarely passed down to the consumer
That would imply that all new cars sell for the same price. Clearly they don't, because customers distinguish between them and are willing to pay different amounts.
> Buying things in the current market landscape is a battle, not an optimization problem.
So what you propose is that we reduce the information available to the buyer by requiring cost cutting to be underhanded rather than overt because overt cost cutting is prohibited, or that it not occur and instead prices go up even if you didn't need that feature and then poor people go broke because everything is more expensive.
> If I left a million dollars out on my front porch, and someone stole it, that would not be my fault in any sort of way
It's possible for multiple people to share the blame for something. You _are_ the victim. The person who stole it _is_ the bad guy / criminal. But you _both_ share the blame, because you did something to put yourself at risk when you had better options.
If I'm out late at night, wearing expensive jewelry and have 2 ways home; one longer but down a well lit road, the other shorter but through a dark alley in a crime ridden neighborhood; and I chose the dark alley and got mugged... I would be the victim AND be partially to blame for making a stupid choice.
Making choices that put yourself at risk by ignoring the realities of the world, when you don't need to, mean you share the blame.
And I'm pointing out that responsibility and blame are not the same things and that conflating the terms leads to positions that are hard to defend. A person may be responsible for their own actions but not to blame for someone else's.
> responsible for their own actions but not to blame for someone else's.
You're changing the target of the actions mid sentence. Said person is responsible for their own actions _and_ to blame for their own actions. They are not responsible for someone else's actions nor to blame for someone else's actions.
If a person knowingly takes actions that put them at greater risk, then they are to blame for putting themselves at greater risk.
Correct, two people: the victim and the criminal. Going back to your example, a victim who gets mugged after choosing to walk down a dark alley is still the victim. They do not share responsibility or fault for the crime. They share responsibility for being in the same place at the same time. The victim making a choice that puts them in the wrong place at the wrong time is not at fault for that crime. I believe you are using the word blame in a broad sense that encompasses both the criminal action and the poor choice. But by using the word in the two senses and then equating them, you end up equating the actions, intentionally or not.
> i'm not negligent for not doing enough to prevent the crimes of some other asshole.
If you entire job is selling locks and they don’t prevent crime, then it’s not negligent, it’s fraudulent.
You want to be in the clear? Sell a car without a lock, see how many people buy that.
> if kia makes a cheap car with crappy locks either don't buy it
And if Boeing makes a cheap, unsafe plane, don’t fly on it
I would be happy to run this experiment if lying to a customer about safety/properties of your product led to capital punishment. But currently companies will simply defraud you by lying about their product, and suffer no consequence
> If you entire job is selling locks and they don’t prevent crime
Does MasterLock making famously easy to pick / rake locks count? I'm sure they reduce crime compared to no lock but they are not as secure as the customer expects.
> And if Boeing makes a cheap, unsafe plane, don’t fly on it
yes. exactly. if boeing ever makes a cheap plane, i would definitely avoid it.
you are comparing a company that cheated on legally mandated safety requirements with a company that didn't put a non-legally required car immobilizer on a lot of their new cars. and then didn't lie about it.
The problem occurs when a vendor makes claims that are false or fails to disclose known issues. I don't think either insecure cars or security tools should be banned. However, I think disclosures should absolutely be made.
Nobody is mentioning about how this is a social problem with the US that needs fixing, for example I often times forget to lock my car's doors in the Eastern European capital where I'm living and yet I've never had anyone "steal" stuff from it.
But I get it, it's easier to think about applying technological or even legal solutions instead of thinking about how to fix a societal problem.
Yup, and you get downvoted for even trying to discuss it. Need the Overton window to shift slightly so it can be discussed on HN.
It is a societal problem and I hope for our future we can fix it.
not hard at all. where is CPS? obviously someone isn't giving an 11 year-old appropriate supervision at all if they are driving, let alone stealing a car. there absolutely should be consequences for both the parents and the child in this situation. i'm not saying one mistake, send the kid to prison, take away parental rights. but it should be severe enough to matter, including several thousand dollars restitution.
but, somehow, i manage to ensure that none of them are stealing cars at 11
"it is not a supervision problem"
hmm. maybe i should have said "parenting issue"...
look, i am blessed to have had good kids. but i have had friends with struggles. if i had a kid that somehow stole a car (at 11) and i had to pay for repairs and meet with CPS and deal with courts and fines and maybe even juve and a lost year of school, we'd get through it.
A tool is a tool, it doesn't make the product weak, it already was.
Also it is silly to ban insecure cars, that's quite the slippery slope. If the cars are too easy to steal insurance will increase accordingly and that will provide incentives to fix that without banning anything.
Hrmm I wonder what would happen if I made a bank that used an unencrypted website for online banking lol.
The problem with your solution here where the insurance company raises rates... yea they already did that with regards to Kia/Hyundai cars and Kia Boyz thefts. The problem is, well, put it this way...
The last time you bought a car, did you check that the car had immobilizer software/hardware present on it? They don't really advertise that stuff anymore. About the only way you'd know on some brands is a nondescript red dot that shows up for a moment when you start the ignition.
Really, I'd bet a lot of people only found out their car didn't have an immobilizer feature until their insurance company dropped them or jacked their rates up... and that's a problem. See, you can buy a car NOW, and everyone thinks it's a good safe car.. until it turns out it wasn't.
> If the cars are too easy to steal insurance will increase accordingly
that's exactly right. i was somewhat surprised that insurance was outright dropping people instead of simply increasing rates. and by the way, you can get a discount if you add x/y/z security alarm/immobilizer. the public outcry already has forced the issue with kia anyhow.
They cost people a lot of time and grief over a goddamn boutique phone, that they were warned would have antenna issues, by the guy that was...Apple's most senior antenna expert, Rubén Caballero, and he was ignored.
When physics caught up the Apple marketing, it took months for Apple to roll out a cheap bumper guard and acted like they were doing everyone a favor.
They never reimbursed people who bought a case to mitigate the issue. They did reimburse those that did have to purchase a rubber bumper.
While you are technically correct, that's about it. The whole thing was a shitshow and Apple acted like the users were the problem until enough of the world mocked them into providing a work-around for a problem that they should have addressed before it was even sold.
>- i also cringe at the idea that we throw the word negligent around when talking about failing to prevent other peoples crimes. i'm not negligent for not doing enough to prevent the crimes of some other asshole. nor is kia. meanwhile, there's sibling threads here that point out that the us is far to hard on the criminals. so wait - kia and me and other law abiding entities are "negligent", but the asshole who stole the car deserves compasion, etc.?
It's pretty simple: if some car manufacturers have much higher rates of theft and are easier to steal than others, they are negligent. If by catching up to industry-standard anti-theft practices, their cars become harder to steal, not doing so is negligent.
for example, if a company made a car alarm called "SUPER EXTRA SECURE ELITE++ V5" and told me it had a "guaranteed thief proof" immobilizer. but then we find that a viral Tik Tok video shows how to with a hairpin and spit we can completely disable it and in 5 seconds and take the car for a drive and access the owners credit card info. and then also the car often bursts into flames while parked and turned off. and we of course find out that this was no "oops" and the corporations involved full-well knew about these issues and hid them to get a bonus. well, that'd certainly be a job for consumer protection laws.
but this is a case of "you got what you paid for". there's a place in the market for crank-up windows and basic plain cars without keyfobs and fancy alarms. that isn't wrong, and it definitely isn't "negligence" just because other carmakers pick different places in the market. and the fact that criminals do bad things doesn't change that.
and, thank you very much, i don't need consumer protection against that kind of thing. let's start with the lying and cheating corps and work our way up to collusion and price fixing. then let's get onto repair...
Though your other comments make it sound like you don't want a car without an immobilizer, in which case it feels like you're manufacturing something to disagree with rather than making a real argument against what I said.
- it's not an act of "negligence" when neither the owner nor the manufacturer choose to not include an extra security feature, even one that a majority of other cars have.
- it's nobody's business what "people ought to want". so that means an arguments based on "nobody should..." or "no rational person..." and "there's nor reason that..." and so on are invalid.
> - it's not an act of "negligence" when neither the owner nor the manufacturer choose to not include an extra security feature, even one that a majority of other cars have.
I don't think this gets to count as "extra".
> - it's nobody's business what "people ought to want". so that means an arguments based on "nobody should..." or "no rational person..." and so on are invalid.
I'm making a general claim about value, nothing personal. Because of that, I don't think it should matter whether wanting it is "nobody's business".
But in particular, I'm saying there's no benefit to avoiding an electronic key. We can remove the word "want" entirely. The downsides are large and the implementation cost is a rounding error. This differs from power windows and "fancy alarms".
Ignoring the strawman of an assailant deserving compassion or not, that’s a self serving and narrow definition of negligence. Any mechanism to protect from misuse has to weighed against the magnitude harm of the event occurring and the possibility of misuse. I would not expect my asset manager to have weak authentication systems to access my portfolio but don’t expect any at all from a free online game. I expect both of these to consider the threats and make reasonable choices. And they would be negligent if they did not do this exercise. Whether is an active threat or a passive act of god.
Sure "don't ban anything", if your car crashes and kills you, "should have read Consumers' Reports". Those botulism eggs? Keep an eye things, damn it. /s
This ill-informed attitude goes over well here unfortunately.
And security may not be quite as pressing safety but poor security cost society besides costing the individual. When poor workers can't get to work 'cause stolen car, their bosses also suffer, when stolen cars are used in further you also get a social cost. etc.
You provide no structural basis or reasoning for these cynical assertions, nor for the implied responses. Seems to be founded on a philosophical foundation of individuals requiring safety from “elsewhere,” and assuming that “elsewhere” actually provides it.
- it's incredibly stupid to ban the flipper zero because it's factually not even part of the problem
- but it's equally stupid to "ban insecure vehicles". if kia makes a cheap car with crappy locks either don't buy it (because maybe insurance) or add and aftermarket immobilizer or a steering wheel lock. if it was really negligent of kia to "save a couple bucks", then it's equally negligent on you for not spending a couple bucks.
- i also cringe at the idea that we throw the word negligent around when talking about failing to prevent other peoples crimes. i'm not negligent for not doing enough to prevent the crimes of some other asshole. nor is kia. meanwhile, there's sibling threads here that point out that the us is far to hard on the criminals. so wait - kia and me and other law abiding entities are "negligent", but the asshole who stole the car deserves compasion, etc.?
- it's stupid-on-stupid-on-stupid to sit here discussing the problem of car thefts, caused by lack of enforcement of the existing laws against it, and the proposed solutions is making more things illegal (and arguing about which things).